In Draenor there are two things that matter, how closely your stats match your spec’s needs and how well you’re buffed.  Good stat distribution and full coverage on buffs and it’s easy to rock Draenor.  Ignore one or the other and you are going to struggle even if your rotation rocks.

For sorting my armor/enchants/gems I use AskMrRobot.  It’s an addon and a website and to use it at its fullest you have to subscribe.  The amount in minuscule for the benefit it offers, though it is confusing as the layout/operation is a bit awkward.  Nothing else does the same job so I suck it up and pay.

Because stat distribution is so important and so specific to each spec, I don’t try and figure out what to equip and what enchants to apply on my own.  With many specs at level 100 I choose to not to spend time sorting out which item in my bag matched with which other items on my toon or in my bag is going to give me the right combo of stats with which enchants . . .  I want to spend my time playing, not wracking my brain.  I LOVE AMR. I can mindlessly equip what it says, enchant what it says and not worry about whether it’s right. It frees me up for the fun stuff.  And if you’re running without Draenor enchants on neck, cloak and rings you’re taking a big hit in dps.  If you’re having trouble staying alive you might want to consider getting your gear enchanted.  If your gear isn’t 695 or better, use Breath of enchants and Mark of the Shattered Hand (weapons) and save your gold for the big enchants when you get better gear.

Buffs . . . Oralius’ Whispering Crystal or stat flask is a must.  Stat flasks give bigger stat buffs, last an hour and persist through death but they’re expensive.  A 100/125 stat food buff is a must. Savage Feast is great because it’s one size fits all.  It gives you 100 of your most useful stat. Tent buff is a huge plus (10% bump all stats) and if your armor score is less than healthy it’s a must.  The rune buff is also a big plus.  Every buff makes you stronger, healthier and increases your dps.

Wear the most appropriate gear you can, make sure it’s enchanted and get those buffs onboard and you’ll rock Draenor.

Garrisons are confusing. There is so much stuff going on it’s hard to know what to do.  There are lots of good garrison building guides but I’m going to try and offer you something different, advice on what order to build and why.

While you are leveling your way through Draenor, in addition to your professional building(s), you need a/an . . .

Inn (don’t waste resources upgrading it).  As soon as you have a medium sized plot available build an inn to get the on-steroids version of the Crystal of Insanity we all got from the cave on Timeless Isle.  The quest you’re after is offered by Oralius, the dwarf standing at the bar – check daily until he’s there and you can grab the quest.  You don’t have to run it the day you grab it, you don’t have to wait for Oralius to show up inside the inn to turn it in.  He’s behind the inn once the quest is done.  You DO have to have the inn to turn it in.  You won’t be able to use someone else’s.   Don’t bother picking up any of the other quests (most are for heroic dungeons) unless you’re going to be running the dungeons or you will clog your quest log.

Trading Post.  A level 3 trading post gives you a 20% boost to rep earned.  To get flight in Draenor, to get the Empowered Augment Rune, to get the 15% flight speed boost in Tanaan, to get the Arakkoa Outcast rep that lets you purchase the Arakkoa Trade Agreement, to get wingman with your bodyguard . . .  you have to gain rep.  As a plus you get the ability to sell excess garrison resources for crafting and cooking mats and trade in mats for garrison resources (daily quest).

Storehouse. Build a level three storehouse IF you don’t plan to play your toon every day.  A level three storehouse boosts the number of available work orders up to 36 (dependent on the level of the barn or professional building).  You can fill all your buildings (assuming they’re level three) and five days later come back to the last work orders just finishing up.

Barn.  If you don’t have a level 3 barn on another toon, start your barn as soon as you can and keep it working.  You have to gain the Master Trapper achievement to open up the level three barn to trap Nagrand elites for crafting mats, feasts and the savage blood needed for crafted upgrades to 685 (675 for weapons and offhands).  The first three upgrades requires 15 savage blood, 15 of one of the sorcerous mats and 70 of the profession mats (burnished leather, war paint, alchemical catalyst, etc.) so it’s of value to get the barn in quickly and start building your stores of mats.  The final two crafted upgrades require 175 and 350 of the professional mats.  It’s good to get started early.

Bunker.  One of the goals with your garrison is to get your slate of followers filled as soon as you can (cap of 20 for a level two barracks, 25 for a level three) and get them leveled and geared to 675 so they can go out on the missions that will get you good gear and gold.  To do that you need the bunker.  The plus here is a free Seal of Inevitable Fate each week.  Two more notes regarding your followers.  First, Garrison Commander (addon) has a wonderful interface that lets you prioritize your mission rewards, set the level of risk you’re willing to take and make mission assignment and mission completion a single button click.  As your followers level you can shuffle the reward priority (yes, I want those special rewards that sell for big gold on the auction house!) and turn off certain types of missions (no, I don’t need any more follower armor tokens).  In addition it works great with the FollowerGearOptimizer addon (assigns armor tokens to followers based on their value to currently available missions).  Second, while you’re pushing your followers to get them to 100, send them out on missions with as little as zero chance of success.  Each mission has a base xp they will get whether the mission succeeds or fails.  The goal is to level your followers as quickly as possible.  If the mission’s sure to fail but the follower will get xp, kick ’em in the butt and send ’em out.  DO NOT do this with your naval fleet.  Followers fail but return smarter.  Ships sink.

Where you go with your buildings after you’ve got all your crafted items upgraded, stacks of savage feasts and crafting mats is totally up to you.  This is intended to give you some guidelines on what to do while you’re working your way to that point.

There’s a lot going on in Tanaan Jungle.  Consider this an addendum to my Draenor Noobs post.

There is a weekly boss you should kill without fail every week.  Kazzak drops 705-711 gear suitable for your spec.  Specifically he drops bracers, neck, cloak and trinket.  He also (without fail) drops felblight.  Felblight is a must for upgrading crafted equipment.  Look closely at the equipment you get off Kaz.  Sometimes it will have a prismatic socket.  Sometimes it will have extra stats like avoidance or leach.  All Kaz drops are not equal so take the time to look carefully.  For Kaz you have a bonus roll available to you.  It can be purchased from the Arakkoa vendor next to the AH in Stormshield for alliance and behind the portal/transmog building in Warspear.  The four quests (gold, apexis, garrison resources, honor) give you the opportunity to trade for a Seal of Inevitable Fate.  Here’s one final tip on this.  If you forget to grab your bonus roll seal, don’t leave group.  Hearth back to Lion’s Watch (if this stone is on cooldown hearth back to your garrison) and step through the portal to Ashran.  Buy the seal and step back through the portal to Lion’s Watch and the bonus roll will pop . . . assuming your group is still active.

Gathering in Tanaan has the chance to drop felblight.  Some days I get lots, some days I get none but if I’m going to do any gathering I try and do it in Tanaan.

If your gear score going into Tanaan is low (below 640 though 660 is a more comfortable ilvl for easily running Tanaan solo), ask someone with flight if they will fly you around to collect treasure and kill bosses.  All treasure chests and fractured apexis bundles have a chance to drop baleful armor tokens which can pop equipment (armor, tokens, jewelry, weapons) that ranges from 650 to 685 in varying degrees of suitability for your spec.

Empowered Apexis Fragments (the upgrade token for items created by the baleful armor tokens) will upgrade your gear to 695.  They are battle.net account bound.  If you start a new toon in Tanaan you can send those upgrade tokens across realm/faction to your noob, so continue to collect apexis crystals even if you don’t think you need them.

There are a couple one-time treasures available in Tanaan.  They appear on the map if you’re using Handinotes:Draenor.  All the other chests and fragments respawn so watch for them as you work your way around Tanaan.

If you chose the artillery tower in Talador, that’s your best option for your garrison ability in Tanaan.  It’s perfect for blasting the adds called by Varyx in Kranak and Riloth in Fel Forge.  Artillery makes these two bosses easy to solo at ilvl 660 assuming you keep your toon properly enchanted and have your buffs up with bodyguard in tow.  If you selected the tank option from Nagrand as your garrison ability . . . well, <wince>.

Fel wolves count as demon and as teeth.  If you have demons and all the fel wolves at the approach to the Throne are up, you can finish your demon quest in about 4 minutes.  If you have teeth, that batch of wolves and all the pigs (including the little ones) near those wolves (one end has Steelsnout) will nearly finish your teeth quest.  Goreclaw’s cave is also a good source.  Swoop through, gather them up and drop one bomb.  That batch is good for between 1/2 and 1/3 of the teeth needed.  There’s another batch of fel wolves up by Sha’naar where Ceraxas spawns.  When you kill Ceraxas the first time a fel pup will spawn near the edge of the cliff.  The quest gives you a spike collar which produces a pet.  You get one of those but collect the collar for each toon as it’s worth a nice chunk of gold.

All the bosses in Tanaan (not Kaz) can be killed daily.  They will drop 655 or better gear each day.  Doing a sweep through Tanaan and killing every boss that pops is an excellent way to gain gold or enchanting mats, whichever you need most.

Fel sludge (the green rivers and pools of stuff in Tanaan) give you a buff/debuff.  Ten stacks will kill you.  Nine stacks gives you a nice dps boost.

Leatherworking hut followers can make tents which give an hour-long 10% stats boost.  These are b.net account bound and can be sent cross realm/server.  You can benefit from anyone’s tent.  This may be faction dependent but can’t tell you for certain.  If you have a tent buff that’s nearly out and want to rebuff, you will have to click the buff off before entering the tent.  You will have to enter the tent unmounted.  If the buff doesn’t pop in ten seconds, exit, check to make sure you don’t already have a tent buff running and reenter.

Outside your garrison (alliance) or by the bonfire at the pet area (horde) is a vendor that will sell you a recipe for 125 stat (more for stamina) food that uses fish.  You can be a level one cook and still use the recipe.  Stacks of the base fish (crescent saberfish) is usually available at the AH in reasonably sized stacks.

Fishing in Tanaan fel sludge pools will produce a fish that, when consumed, gives you a damage buff.  Fishing them can also produce felblight.  This fish is a great one to use if you don’t have food (savage feast, the chili that drops off the mission table or cooked food suitable to your spec).

If you sit down to eat and can’t get the food buff, you have a buff in place that is better than the food you’re trying to eat.  If you have an about to expire 125 food buff sitting down to eat a savage feast (100 stat food buff) will do nothing.  Click off the better buff and try again.

It is not necessary, when starting a toon in Tanaan, to complete the Iron Front objective area. Talk to Murad, turn in the quest from Yrel, pick up the flight point/scouts quest and skip completing the Iron Front.  This will speed your setup for Tanaan and leaves the area available for the two objective areas quest you’ll pick up after finishing the mission table.

Have you ever queued and waited . . . and waited . . . for a healer?  Have you ever stopped to wonder why?  I can share a few reasons with you.  I’m sure this isn’t a complete list.  If you are a healer some of these will resonate, I am sure.

If you’re a tank, have you ever considered how much more difficult you make the healer’s job if you:

• don’t turn the mob away and the healer and all the dps gets blasted as a result
• take off to the next mob so fast the healer can’t get you back up to full health
• take off so fast to the next mob the healer doesn’t have time to loot
• take off so fast to the next mob the healer doesn’t have time to buff you for the next fight?
• pull too large a mob for the healer to heal through?
• fail to hold aggro so the healer gets attacked?

Sadly, it’s not unusual for a healer to experience each of those IN A SINGLE DUNGEON.  The tank happily bounces along singing “ME, ME, ME, ME” and the healer fights to hold the pack together and keep them healed.  Many tanks are so self-centered they’re rushing forward with no clue or care that they’ve left live mob behind which holds up the dps AND the healer.

Can you tell I’ve had a bad day healing dungeons?  Some of those pricks were so bad they ended up on my ignore list.  If they’re that bad, I don’t need to know them.  I think I’ll fix myself a drink and listen to some soothing music.

It’s funny how some small disaster can lead to neat discoveries.  I wore out my Kinesis Freestyle2 keyboard.  Yup, literally wore it out . . . well, the left half of it, anyway.  I poured half a cup of sweetened coffee on the right half.  Ouch.  So for a week and a half I used something else.  One temporary replacement was a mini usb keyboard.  Boy did that suck.  Truly.  I was back to being a noob player with reduced dps.  Yeah, having the right keyboard is definitely key.  But . . . the silver lining . . .

Did you know . . . you can bind shift-space bar?  Yup.  As of yesterday I have an easy mount-up and ride/fly key combo.  I have a ButtonForge button set to shift-space bar and I drag onto that button whichever mount I will need . . . or whichever macro I need (no you will NOT dismount me in flight).  Beauty!  No more trying to find the right mount each time I want to mount up.  Will you be spending time flying someone around in Draenor?  Drag the Sandstone Drake onto the button.  Have stables in your garrison and want to do some quick mining/herbing?  One of the panther mounts is just the thing.  I love it when I find a method that’s both efficient and elegant.

The Draenor expansion is full of awesome stuff. I’m going to list a few here and add to it as more occur to me.

If you are new to Draenor you might as well work toward flight as you level. Go to Wowhead and bookmark the flying progress tool.  As you work through each region, finish the requirements for Draenor flight.  When you get to Tanaan you’ll be most of the way through the required achievements.

Sergeant Crowler in your garrison sells a potion of accelerated learning.  It costs 100 garrison resources and increases your xp for one hour.  If you’re in a hurry to level it’s a must purchase.

Make sure you have Handinotes and Handinotes:Draenor addons loaded so all the treasures show on the map.  Collect them as you go.  You will need the garrison resources.

You can equip three warforge crafted items at level 91.  Watch the auction house and get the best buys you can. If the stats aren’t perfect you can buy items that reroll the stats to those more favorable to your build.  If you are an alchemist you can make a 620 trinket.  You need the stone for some of the alchemy transmutes and this stone does not count toward your warforge crafted limit of three.

There are a plethora of followers in Draenor.

• Collect Fen Tao (standing next to the town hall steps in Stormshield) when you fly there to do the quest line that gets you Delvar (bodyguard follower).
• Get Romuul (jewelcrafting), Rulkan (quest line, blacksmithing) and Shelly Hamby (quest line, leatherworking) while you’re running Shadowmoon Valley.
• There are two followers in Gorgrond that aren’t apparent, Blook (beat him up) and Tormmok (protect him).  Look them up for the coordinates.  They’re both down by Bastion Rise.  There are a couple others you’ll get when you quest through.
• In Talador pick up Ahm (inscription), Pleasurebot 5000 (tailoring) and Ilona (bodyguard).  Choose the artillery outpost ability in Talador and bomb the npcs for an easy peasy win for Ilona.  Artillery is the best choice here because you’ll use it in Tanaan . . . a lot.  Save yourself 5000g by choosing artillery the first time.  Yup, been there.
• In Spires of Arak get Leorajh (bodyguard).  The other followers here are questline.    Make sure you read the linked follower guide and watch vids on how to get Leorajh.  Without flying he’s a bit difficult to get to.
• In Nagrand get Lantresor (quest line, mining follower) and Abu’gar (collect scattered parts).

This is a bit of a repeat but . . . if you are a blacksmith or will have a blacksmithing hut, make sure you get Rulkan in Shadowmoon Valley (Alliance, Horde has a similar follower).  As a follower assigned to the blacksmithing hut, she provides a 4 hour buff that protects your armor and provides a elemental to fight with you which, other than bodyguards, makes her the best follower in the game.

In Spires of Arak get the Peon Mining Pick. If you have mining it cuts mining time in half. It stacks with the Preserved Mining Pick Lunarfall Excavation buff and reduces your Lunarfall Excavation node mining time to half a second (this is for everyone, not just toons with mining profession).  With the mining pick in your bag and the mining pick buff onboard, it takes longer to loot than to mine.  Sweet!  Oh, and Miner’s Coffee stacks.  The funniest in-game thing at the moment is male Panda monk on three stacks of miner’s coffee.  OMGosh.  And if you’re efficient you can complete the mine in the three minute limit of miner’s coffee.  If you can’t due to goren infestation, the stack renews to the full three minutes when a new miner’s coffee is added so don’t start with a stack of five or you won’t have room to add one.

In Nagrand get Gorepetal’s Gentle Grasp.  It cuts gathering time in the garden in half for everyone. If the toon has the herbalism profession it cuts gathering to half a second Draenor wide.  This and the Peon Mining Pick don’t have to be equipped but they do need to be in your bag to provide the buff.  Gorepetal doesn’t show up on the map if you’re running NPCScan (addon) until you’re right up against the cave.

Buff tents are a new thing in Draenor.  They provide a 10% stats buff like the rested bonus you get from staying in an inn and the effect stacks with other buffs.  The tents are made by the leatherworking follower (Shelly Hamby from Shadowmoon Valley for Alliance) assigned to the leatherworking hut.  They only stack to five though there are so many varieties of tents you could fill a bag with the variety available.  They are account bound and can be sent cross server/faction.  They can be used by level one toons.  The buff drops off in dungeons and raids and if you logout.  It doesn’t stick like most other buffs.

Bodyguards!  Let’s hear it for bodyguards!  Once you have a level 2 barracks you can assign a bodyguard to your barracks from the architect’s table.  Pick up the bodyguard at the steps to the barracks.  If you kill off your bodyguard you can unassign that one and assign another.  The steward in the barracks sells a device that let’s you micro-size your bodyguard.  The need for this will become clear once you start running with a bodyguard.  Tormmok is enormous and Leorajh is only a little bit smaller.  Oh, and get the addon BodyguardAway so you don’t get the annoying window up every time you accidentally click your bodyguard.  One more thing on bodyguards.  Their strength/survivability/damage/heals is dependent on your item level.  You can take a level 94 bodyguard and s/he will do impressive things if your gear score is nice and high.  If your gear score sucks, taking a 675 geared bodyguard is going to do you no good.  Their effectiveness scales to your gear, not theirs.

Crafts and crafting . . . There are three methods of updating your armor in Draenor.  For crafted items you can purchase the first upgrade pat from the trainer in your profession hut.  The first three crafted upgrades require Savage Blood which is gotten from a level 3 barn.  Until you’ve got your gear completely through the first three upgrades a barn is a must.  Each upgrade takes 15 savage blood.  Suck it up, build the barn . . . after you do Oralius’s quest (inn or tavern) and get the crystal.  This is the on-steroids version of the Crystal of Insanity we all sought on Timeless isle.  So, build the inn first, watch for Oralius, run Blackrock Spire (dungeon), get the crystal and replace the inn with the barn.  All the other inn quests require Silver on the Proving Ground.  That’s great stuff for later but to start . . . you just need the crystal and the quest and dungeon for that item don’t require heroic.

The second upgrade for crafted items requires a pattern purchased from the daily trader.  Herb trader has alchemy and inscription pats.  Ore trader has blacksmithing and engineering pats.  Leather trader has leatherworking pats. Fur trader has tailoring pats.  Dust trader has enchanting pats.   The traders are on a five day cycle, herb-ore-dust-fur-leather.  Excess raw mats can be traded to the traders for primal spirits and the traders will all have a handover quest for 25 primal at a cut rate.  So if you’re a leatherworker and have collected stacks of ore and herbs and dust (from DEing your gear) visit the right trader and swap it for primals to boost your production of your profession’s soulbound mat.  Sweet!

Garrisons!  There’s so much going on here there’s no way I can adequately cover it all.  The internet is a great resource and wowhead rocks.  You can visit another person’s garrison to use their huts or the daily trader.  Go to the dungeon eyeball, click premade groups, custom groups and type in the search box.  You can find someone with an enchanting studio and disenchant all  your soulbound gear for the mats (once you join the group click your picture and view leader’s garrison) or use their enchanting follower’s enchant effect on your weapon.  When you’re done visiting you’ll want to leave group, then click your pic and view your garrison.  If you don’t you’ll get chucked out way past the Bling rock and have to hoof it back.